5 Ways You Can Grow Your Small Business Via Email Marketing

Did you know that “78% of consumers rank email as the most preferred communication platform”? Compared to marketing trends that use social media platforms, good email marketing campaign is still at the top of the list when it comes to attracting more and more customers and giving your business a proper boost. The secret of an effective email marketing campaign lies in knowing your customers and their needs well, as well as in choosing the marketing technique most appropriate for your type of business. In this article, we’ll take a look at five effective email marketing strategies you can use in order to improve the visibility of your small business and grow it faster.

Build That List Right From the Start

If you have wondered about when to start building your email list, this is the answer – now. Some small businesses sometimes forget to leverage their blog or website to build their email list and, thus, lose attention of a high number of users. This step is, actually, quite simple. Set up a short email sign-up form on your website and you’ll be more than satisfied with the results. In addition, it’s very important to give users some sort of incentive to sign-up to your list. So, think about the topics that would be relevant to your audience and start offering a newsletter or a freebie. You’ll attract more users if you offer them valuable content the moment they first meet you.

Don’t forget that your email list should Always Be Growing (ABG). There are various techniques you can use to do it properly. For instance, you can have your visitors register for every action they take. Then, think about creating different contests that require filling out short forms, or you can host a webinar that requires registration. Apart from that, you can have a forum that requires registration or just have a newsletter sign-up box. Whatever you do, make sure you play nice and avoid having your email end up eaten by a spam filtering system. People need to know they will receive emails from you in the future when they sign-up your list.

Think Big – Think Discounts

Customers love discounts, we all know that. There’s no better marketing strategy than to offer discounts and deals to your consumers every now and then. Think of a good offer and promote it on all your social media profiles. You can also use your blog posts and articles to do the same.

Test, Test, Test

If you put a lot of effort into thinking of a good email marketing campaign, you need to check if it’s really working. Testing can give you essential information at every possible level of your campaign and help you get most of it. That also means more sales. Brianna Bell, SEO Analyst at American West Jewelry/Relios Inc. Carolyn Pollack, points out the effectiveness and benefits of A/B testing. This type of testing helps you gather metrics on the conversion rates and open rates and then make improvements based on data you collected. She also says that “there’s no solution better than responding to how your customer respond to you.” Also, apart from A/B testing, you can use focus groups or surveys that will test the appeal of your email design, before it set sails.

Provide Valuable Content

Whenever you send an email to your subscribers, remember that they are on your list because they want to learn something new, not to hear how great you are. Therefore, always follow the golden 80/20 rule: “80 percent of your content should be devoted to valuable and useful information, and 20 percent should be devoted to your offer or sales pitch.” This is the only way you’ll show respect to your email subscribers and keep them on your list. Otherwise, you may expect to find your email in their spam filter list or marked as irrelevant content. And you don’t want that to happen.

Pick the Best Time When to Send

Before you decide when the best time to send emails is, you need to do some testing. In this way you’ll find out how changing the frequency of your emails influences your metrics. It’s not always a good time to send an email blast, as stated in the research by Experian. The highest open rate, 21.7% to be correct, happens between 8pm and midnight, when people arrived back home and had dinner. Don’t forget how smart spam filters can be, so make sure that your subject lines don’t include words that trigger spam filters. Your campaign will only be successful if it falls in the appropriate mailbox.

Creating a good and effective email marketing campaign for your small business can be challenging, but it is an essential step you need to take. Whenever you decide to take it, these marketing strategies provided above can definitely help you develop your business further.

Share small business news, blogs and social media tips with Project Eve's community of small business owners and entrepreneurs today. Our contributors come from a wide range of backgrounds; so whether you are a small business owner, social media strategist, financial adviser, serial entrepreneur, or write an amateur blog we urge you to contribute a blog to our 500,000+ community today. For more information, please refer to our Content Submissions Guidelines.

PROJECT EVE MEDIA

Project Eve Media is social media management company with a concentration on lead generation and sales. We position our clients for success through social media management services, social media advertising services, website design, and content marketing.